


Could Have Been

by InterNutter



Category: Star Trek: Deep Space Nine
Genre: Alternate Universe, F/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2013-06-10
Updated: 2013-06-10
Packaged: 2017-12-14 12:57:21
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,927
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/837133
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/InterNutter/pseuds/InterNutter
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>An alternate reality in which Odo got away from the research centre earlier than we know.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Could Have Been

Disclaimer: Star Trek: Deep Space Nine and all associated characters belong to Paramount studios and whoever owns them. This story is all that belongs to me. Please do not nick it.

Could Have Been  
InterNutter

Yes! She hit it! Kira bounded down the mountain, following the trail of smoke and using the comm. "Spoonie transit going down, east of Kadanga mountain, currently tracking, myself. Come back."  
"Tread carefully, Chula."  
"I'm a big girl, Furel," she laughed. Just past her ih'tana and still aching from the party, Nerys bounded across the rocky landscape like a garu high on fermented Jumja. She didn't even flinch when the transit crashed and shook the mountain.  
She scrambled through the Yingari pass in record speed, but a night had passed before she came to the newest crater in the Dakhur mountains. Nerys chewed a finger of Rakja bark to help her stay awake as she scrambled into the wreck.  
Someone, despite the scatter of dead bodies, was alive and unharmed and laying out the dead.  
Five Cardassians in varying stages of destruction. The flat-faced Bajoran in a basic green jumpsuit wasn't laying them out out of any form of respect. He was doing so in a sort of detached forensic interest.  
"Anyone else make it?" she demanded.  
"I... think Mora escaped. I can't find him." the stranger picked up a charred bag and held it to his chest.  
"Well it won't get any better hanging around." She seized his arm and dragged him back towards her cell's central area.  
"Where are you taking me?"  
"Does it matter?"  
The stranger was silent for a while. "No. I suppose not."  
They got as far as the Yingari pass before dawn threatened. She dragged him into a cave that was more or less a shallow scoop in the valley wall. Nerys hunkered against a wall, spat out the Rakja bark and closed her eyes.  
"What are you doing?"  
"Resting," said Nerys. "I advise you do the same. One Bajoran can scurry along the underbrush without notice? But two can get spotted." She got herself as comfortable as possible. "So I'm resting until the light's not in this pass. And so should you." Nerys opened an eye to peek.  
The stranger rearranged some rocks in a corner and lifted a pail from the bag. He nested it as securely as he could.  
"You planning to use that?"  
"You said two Bajorans could get spotted," he said, "but I'm... not Bajoran." he turned into a golden column of goo, became a small garu, then changed back into a humanoid in a green jumpsuit with a flat face. "I'm a shapeshifter. Until you shot that transit, I was an experimental animal in a lab."  
Nerys controlled her breathing and bladder with an iron will. "You... What are you?"  
"I'm... Nothing," he said, "And I'll be out of your way as soon as I know of somewhere to go."  
"Shakaar would know," she blurted. "I can take you, but only when the light's right."  
"Don't worry," he said, "I'm completely helpless in my liquid state." then he melted and poured himself into the pail.  
There was a trick in the Resistance. Resting the mind and body while simultaneously keeping enough of it aware to react to a change in circumstances. It didn't do enough of the job of proper sleep, but it did enough to keep alive until it was safe enough to sleep.  
The light changed enough. She woke and tapped the metal pail full of orange goo. "Time to move," she said. "Let's go."  
The thing poured himself into a humanoid again and stuffed the pail into the bag he'd carried it in.  
"I can take you to the other side of the pass, then you're on your own. Got it?"  
"Thank you, ma'am," he said. He followed her like a slave. Head down. Quiescent and humble.  
All the same, they reached her destination with no alarms or phaser fire.  
"Excuse me, ma'am? If you don't mind me asking..."  
"You need directions?"  
"If it's not too much trouble."  
"Where do you want to go?"  
"I... should return to the Bajoran Institute for Scientific Investigation."  
"Never heard of it. Do you know which province it's in?"  
"It's in Tozhat."  
Kira boggled. "That's clear on the other side of the world! What were you doing up here?"  
"There was going to be a party. I am... Was. The entertainment. Would you like to see me Be something? Many find it... amusing."  
"Who are the many?" Kira wondered.  
"They don't tell me names. Cardassians, mostly."  
So by preventing this thing from making its way to Tozhat, maybe she was depriving the spoonheads of a comfort. "I think you'd better come with me, after all."  
He followed, still in the same attitude, as she lead him up game trails towards the caves her cell called home. "May I ask where you're taking me?"  
"Somewhere you won't have to entertain Cardassians, any more."  
"Ah," he said. At length, he added, "Good."

Odo Ital had worked hard to be pleasant. Many torturous hours at the hands of the Cardassians and, to a lesser extent, Doctor Mora, had taught him proper behaviour. It was an act he didn't understand, like many he'd been taught, but an act he had to maintain.  
People got hurt if he didn't behave.  
His companion stopped at a branch in the paths and whistled shrilly. An answering set of whistles apparently told her which path to take. He followed, maintaining the proper attitude and keeping her feet in his sight at all times.  
He'd never seen Bajorans like the ones waiting for the red-haired young lady. Their clothing was mismatched and often dirty. Their hair was in varying stages of unkempt. Every last one of them had a weapon. None had their heads down. All were doing something.  
And there were no Cardassians.  
"What happened to the supervisor?"  
"We're our own supervisors," said the young lady.  
A blonde stood, knife in hand. "Who's your friend?"  
"Crash survivor," said his companion. "Says he's nothing. I think he's something else."  
"He moves like a slave," said a dark-haired man by the blonde's side.  
"He probably was one," said his companion. "I can't get a lot out of him? But he's... not as Bajoran as he seems."  
"I... Could show them?" he offered.  
"Not yet," she hissed.  
"Chula, what the flakk?" another dark-haired man appeared from the cavern. He negligently held a Cardassian phaser rifle in one arm. "You don't bring survivors back. You show them the way to move on."  
"He doesn't have anywhere to go," said miss Chula, "except straight back to where he started. I don't think anyone deserves to be a performing animal, do you?"  
"Performing... Animal?" said the new man.  
"I'm a shapeshifter," blurted Odo. "I can be... entertaining."  
Miss Chula grimaced. "It's unnerving to watch," she said. "The spoonheads're using him like some kinda luxury item. We gotta do something."  
"Weren't you... afraid of me?" Odo murmured.  
"I get over things quick," she said.  
"Shapeshifter, eh?" said the blonde. "How's that work?"  
"Doctor Mora said he was still trying to figure that out," Odo found it safer to look at his feet when discussing himself. At least then, he could pretend no-one was about to laugh at him. "I can change myself to resemble any animal or inanimate object I've... studied."  
"Not people?"  
"Not people. Not... accurately."

"Show us," said Shakkar. "Copy Chula."  
Kira watched him nervously turn as if asking permission. "We need to see," she said. "Do it."  
Nothing put down his bag and actually looked at her for the first time. His eyes were chillingly blue. He turned golden, shrank down to her height. The clothing was almost perfect. The skin tone... Less so. Patches of dirt showed up on his flesh like tattooed-in blemishes. The hair was a solid lump that sort-of merged with the shoulders... And he missed out on the nose and the ears completely. Yet her eyes stared back at her. "I'd need weeks of study," said Nothing with her voice. "The details are key."  
"Who'd you copy for your last body?"  
"Nobody... I... Tried to create an individual appearance." He looked down at his feet again. "I'm not very good at it. Sorry."  
"You can stop pretending to be me, now," said Kira.  
He visibly relaxed, even as he changed. He even whispered, "Thankyou," when he had his own face and voice back.  
"Don't thank me yet, we all have to decide."  
Nothing just hung his head and stood there.  
Kira watched him over her shoulder as she followed the others into more private conference grounds inside the caverns. He looked so... lost.

Odo watched the female as she resumed her activity. When she wasn't chopping things, she was adding them to a big pot of brown with bubbles coming up and fire at the bottom.  
She looked up at him without moving her head. "Don't help..." she drawled. "You might break a nail."  
"I don't have nails," said Odo. "And I haven't the faintest idea how to... participate."  
Now she stopped her activities to stare at him. "You never cooked? What did the spoonheads feed you?"  
"I don't eat."  
She raised her eyebrows. "Convenient." Then she shrugged and indicated a nearby rock. "Sit here. Watch and learn. This," she waved an object, "is Taba. This," another object, "is a knife. We use the knife to take the peel off the outside."  
"Why?"  
"Cooked Taba skin is bitter. Raw Taba skin is worse." She moved slowly, so he could see how she separated skin from flesh. "Always be careful not to cut yourself. Face the blade away from yourself."  
"Knives don't harm me."  
"Good for you, but you'd make people panic if you did this any other way."  
And panic was a bad thing. Odo did his best to mimic her methods. He felt slow and clumsy and kept waiting for the laughter.  
It didn't come. Everyone here was too busy with their own concerns to bother with laughing at him.  
"Not bad," the woman allowed. "Now. Here's how we chop them for the stew."

It took hours to decide to try Nothing out for a week. When Kira exited the caves, he was helping awkwardly with Lupaza's Pulaku stew. He stirred like someone who had never seen a ladle before.  
She smiled at him as she approached. "So what do you think, 'Paza? Good enough cook?"  
"Why not?" said Lupaza, "I taught him everything he knows."  
"The good news is, you get to stay for a week," she told Odo. "Make yourself useful, you get to choose where you go. Make yourself invaluable, we'll want to keep you."  
"And when I fail? At being useful?"  
'When'... not 'if'. Nothing didn't exactly revel in a high opinion of himself. "Never happened before," she shrugged. "You already have skills none of us can match. And given how fast you learn... I think you might just make yourself invaluable."  
He froze, staring at her as if she'd just told him she could make the Cardassians go away by shouting 'boo' at them. "No-one... believed in me... before."  
"About time someone started, then."

One thing about Nothing, he was a quick study. He may have been awkward, but he picked things up at a rapid pace. More than once, Kira found herself helping him perform more economic motions by wrapping herself around him and puppeting him into the correct moves.  
"You make it look so easy," he complained.  
"Longer practice time," Kira dismissed. "You learn fast, that's a good thing."  
"There's so much... How do you remember it all?"  
She shrugged. "Muscle memory, I suppose. Do something often enough it gets to be automatic."  
"Ah. That explains a lot."  
"It does?"  
"I don't have muscles."  
Kira let him go so she could read his smooth features. "Is everything difficult for you?"  
That confused, lost stare. "I... don't have difficulty with some things. Talking with you. Learning with you. I don't have much basis for comparison, but... You're the best teacher I've had so far."  
"Mustn't have had a lot of teachers," she joked.  
He turned away and looked at his feet. "No. I haven't."  
How could he keep opening her eyes like that? Ever after that exchange, she noticed how Nothing didn't interact with the other members of the Shakkar. It wasn't a case of his anti-sociality, but rather the others shunning the obvious offworlder in their midst.  
They'd only accept his help if none of the others were available. They'd pass his questions on to someone who would tolerate them. Few taught him much, but they expected him to cope like anyone else.  
When he wasn't busy helping, he would practice everything he'd learned with a relentlessness Kira had rarely seen. He'd taken over a small space in the back of the caves and filled every spare space with apparently random junk. Somewhere in the ur-mess, Kira knew, he kept his pail.  
He was the outsider. Always.  
There was only one way to become an insider.  
So she sat beside him and helped clean guns. "Come up with a plan."  
"I beg your pardon?" said Nothing.  
"You need to come up with a plan. For a mission. A good one."  
"In two days?"  
"I've watched you. You're clever. You can think of something."  
Nothing concentrated on his work. Not looking at her. "I'm not all that clever."  
For a rare minute, Kira stopped. "You've been told that too much, haven't you?"  
He shrank in on himself a little more.  
"Listen to me," she said. "I know you can do this. I believe in you."  
He turned his piercing blue eyes on her. "Why?"  
"Faith doesn't need reasons, Nothing. Maybe all you need to change where you've been into where you're going is one person to believe in you."  
He stretched, briefly, into a straight and proud creature before shrinking back into himself. "I'll... have to work hard not to disappoint you."  
Kira summoned an encouraging, if wan, smile and went back to her work of helping him. Not that he needed a lot of help, anymore.

Odo watched, as he always did, while the rebels bickered over a mud and twig model of a pass they all knew well by now. He'd already shapeshifted better ears three times in an effort to catch what their leader was saying.  
"If I understand properly," he interrupted. "Your goal is to destroy a contingent of fresh troops from Cardassia?"  
"Yes," said Shakkar. "Was I mumbling again?"  
"Yes!" His loyal followers chorused.  
"Do you plan to repeat this goal with the next troop carrier?" asked Odo.  
"Uh. Yeah, I guess..."  
"And the one after that?"  
"Er..."  
"They're going to have to stop bringing troop carriers through here at all, if you keep doing that."  
Shakkar finally took it as a challenge. "So you have a better plan?"  
Odo did his best not to look at Kira, who was bursting something internal with the effort to restrain her emotions. "I just find killing to be little to... Permanent."  
"Permanent."  
"They can't learn anything when they're dead," said Odo. "And we have to teach them that it's a better idea to leave."  
"Go ahead," said Shakkar, "tell us all what you'd do."  
"Fake a raid gone bad. Kill as few as possible, but leave them injured, low on rations... And make certain that their vehicle is barely capable of limping along to their destination."  
Kira stopped vibrating with enthusiasm.  
"Let them live?" sneered a Bajoran known only as Fang.  
"I know. It seems the wrong thing to do, but think about it for a moment. You kill a Cardassian troop, they just bring in a new one... But wound one - they spend time, effort and resources fixing them up. Almost break a machine and they'll repair it rather than bring in a brand new one."  
"And keep stealing the new parts," said Fang, brightening to the idea.  
"Different ones each time!" Kira joined in.  
"And sabotage the medical facilities," added Shakkar. "We can keep them running so hard they won't have time to murder Bajorans."  
"That's my plan," said Odo.

And now he was holding a liberated phaser rifle, staring down the sights at the troop carrier and its escort.  
"Your plan," Shakkar said. "Your shot first."  
This was a test. And he'd better not fail. The Bajorans expected gore. So be it. He shot off the weapons hand of a soldier. One less to shoot back.  
Kira shot half the face off the driver with evident glee.  
After that, it was harder to keep track. Odo concentrated on aiming crippling shots at the Cardassians about to aim at Bajorans or, failing that, causing confusion amongst the enemy.  
It was easy to think of Cardassians as the enemy. They made it easy.  
But even the enemy didn't deserve to die.  
He'd decided that a long time ago.  
And then, before he was sure he was ready, the signal came and the resistance scattered for the hills. Odo morphed into a large horocat, phaser inside his mass, and hauled Kira off on his shoulders.  
She kept shooting until she lost sight of the Cardassians.

Nerys watched him toss the gun into a hollow as he resumed his normal humanoid shape. Typical first-timer reaction. She made herself comfortable. "You'll get better," she said.  
"I don't want to get better at killing."  
She nearly called him by name, but stopped. "Damnit, I can't keep calling you 'nothing' all the time... Don't you have any other name?"  
Stare. "Perhaps... Odo?"  
And that's when it clicked. He'd only named himself 'nothing' in Cardassian. He had more reason to hate and kill the spoonheads than anyone. "Odo... It's not about getting better at killing. It's... It's about getting better at... at dealing with what you have to do."  
He wasn't looking at her. He wasn't looking at anything. "I've heard... Cardassians say that the Bajorans are like children. But... Cardassians treat their own children with more kindness than they would a Bajoran. Or... any non-Cardassian."  
"I know," she said. "They don't steal from their children. Or put them in camps. Or torture and kill them for fun. Or experiment on them."  
Odo startled. "You were experimented on, too?"  
Now it was her turn to stare. "No. I know someone who was. Those kinds of scars... don't always show and they never really heal."  
Odo nodded in understanding and an awkward silence fell.  
"Did... They... make you like this?" she asked.  
Odo shook his head. "No. I've always been... different. They've been... trying to find out what I am. What I can do," his gaze went into the middle of nothing again. "I *won't* be a weapon."  
"That's why you won't kill," she said.  
He lowered his head in acknowledgement. "I understand that's not... ideal... for a resistance member."  
"No," she agreed. "It isn't. But there's are plenty of us with flaws. We work around them. I saw Haaj grab some of the rifles that troop carrier had. You did a terrific job covering him."  
"I just didn't want anyone to die because of me," said Odo.  
That almost broke her heart. "Death happens, Odo. You can't stop it. Not on Bajor. Even sitting here, hundreds are dying in the camps. Would you stop it all?"  
"I wouldn't know where to start," Odo admitted, "but if I knew where to go and how to do it... I would."  
"Same with all of us," said Lupaza as she entered their little hide-away. "We just don't think that killing Cardassians is all that horrible in comparison."  
"I won't be a weapon," Odo repeated.  
It was a vow he kept for years with the Shakkar.

Shakkar was smart enough to know how best to use the people he lead, Kira noticed. And Odo knew the Bajora would never accept him as the leader of the cell. So while Edon gave the orders, Odo did the strategy. Kira did the running and shooting and occasionally barking orders to those in her command.  
And, one of the things that rankled was, no matter how brilliant Odo was with his strategies... He was always the most grudgingly promoted.  
It was a lingering source of annoyance.  
"What do you care? Is he your pet, now?"  
Kira punched the idiot who said that. Knocked him flat. "He's twice as good as any of us! Why shouldn't we at least pay him the same rewards? But what does he get? Less than half!"  
Odo did his appearing out of the background trick. "I don't need rewards."  
"YOU STILL EARNED THEM!"  
"It doesn't matter, Captain," Odo tried to explain. "We should be getting on with fighting the Cardassians, not arguing over pointless baubles."  
"They're not pointless!"  
"I have no need of *things*... Medals, promotions, awards... They're just clutter."  
"They're recognition, Odo!"  
"The only 'recognition' I want is to be treated like everyone else in this cell!"  
Rilis piped up. "How can we? He sleeps in a pail!"  
At least he'd learned to keep his head up. His only consent to his former attitude of shame was that he shut his eyes. When he opened them again, they we burning with anger.  
"Well. It's obvious I can't prove myself here. I'll have to find somewhere else." Odo vanished into the caves to return with his bag - much battered and repaired by now - which contained his pail. "Good luck with your endeavours, General Shakkar. Captain Kira. Majors Furel and Lupaza."  
And then he briskly walked away.  
"He'll be fine," said Lupaza. "We taught him everything we could."  
Kira snatched up her rifle and ran down the same path Odo had taken. "That doesn't mean he's good at *all* of it!"  
Lupaza stared down the rest of the cell. "If she comes back with so much as one bruise..."  
"What?" said Rilis. "It was the stupid offworlder's fault..."  
"That 'stupid offworlder' is why the Spoonheads are talking about leaving. He's worth three of any of us and if you dare bad-mouth him again in my hearing, I'll shoot your wraith-damned lips off!"  
Rilis turned to Shakkar, who said the clearest public speech he'd ever spoken to date.  
"She's right. Let's go."

Odo had never thought he would ever reach the point where he could ignore the sunshine. He'd never have believed that he could ever casually treat any variety of freedom. Yet here he was, marching down a shell-shot and phaser-blasted road as if he hated it.  
Why?  
The cell he'd been staying with all this time had given him no real reason to stay. They had given him attitudes varying from icy disregard to outright molten hatred of his offworlder status. They spoke little to him, and when they did, they did so as if he were the living embodiment of filth.  
Not one of them wanted him there.  
No. That wasn't entirely correct. One of them wanted him.  
But she only wanted him to keep him away from his wealthy Cardassian audience.  
Some kind of pet.  
He wasn't anyone's animal, any more.  
Odo added artistic patches of dirt and damage to his overall look, so he'd have an obvious excuse for not having ID. Or any of the numerous pieces of paperwork the Cardassians insisted the natives have with them at all times. He affected the walk, too, of someone down on his lick and treading resignedly towards the last glimmer of hope.  
He actually got very far before a Cardassian patrol found him.

**Author's Note:**

> There's a planned sequence at a mining/death camp, hence the warning. I'm still noodling with What Happens Next. But it will include a Shakaar raid :)


End file.
